There are probably lots of ice cream trucks cruising through Manhattan on any given summer afternoon.

But there’s only one Big Gay Ice Cream Truck. As a marketing tool, the name has three important things going for it:

• It is so far from the expected that it forces  people (i.e. potential customers) to pay attention.
• It establishes a genuine point of differentiation. That differentiation doesn’t have to be the product itself to be significant, which is likely similar to ice cream you can buy elsewhere.
• It implicitly accepts the risk that some people will be offended. Some people will refuse to buy ice cream from this truck because of the name — owner Doug Quint is willing to sacrifice that business in return for a (presumably larger and more loyal) customer base that will seek him out. (For more on this concept, go here)

Thank you to Zach Newman for tipping me off to the NPR story on this.

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